Not least of which is the question of original sin, a tradition that seems harder and harder to reconcile with what science is telling us about human origins, because it presupposes a fixed idea of human nature.
There is a big problem, not so much about the number of people doing science, as the fact that it has got very skewed towards particular areas of science, such as IT and biology, and we are losing out on people doing some of the harder subjects such as physics and chemistry.
It appears to be getting harder to replicate the results of studies published in even the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals like Science and Nature.